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Media Articles - 1990s

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3 December 2002
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Subject: Sweden: Editorial in _Nordsjernan_
From: NoScieno@aol.com (NoScieno)
Date: 1998/04/24
Newsgroups: alt.religion.scientology

This article appeared in the Apr 16 edition of the Swedish-American newspaper _Nordsjernan_, and was passed along to me by a friend who was gracious enough to translate it for me.


"Ur Svenska hjärtans Djup"
(From the Depth of the Swedish heart)

The King, Karin and Scientology

Once upon a time I was on the point of losing my wife to the Church of Scientology. Therefore I am not at all surprised at the improper enlisting methods used by the sect. The latest example is a propaganda film in which Sweden is depicted as a drug swamp of crime and misuse. And so was put in a film clip with the King, who was declared to be aware of the problems and a devoted patron of the Scientology church. Because the sect never does anything which will not make money for it, so is the essence of the film to join the Narconon program, which I am certain costs a pretty penny.

The Royal Court is naturally upset and says that the King never cooperated in the film nor had the slightest thing to do with the sect. Over there in Clearwater Florida, site of the sect's headquarters, no one can explain how they came by the film clip of the royal couple, filmed over 10 years ago. Now from Clearwater has come a letter to the Royal Court in which they beg pardon for having used the King as a PR person in the film, hundreds of copies of which have been sent over the whole world. "We have made a blunder" says the sect's information chief in Sweden, Tarja Vulto.

I declare that it is more than a blunder. That is an inconsiderate, shameless, clear defamation that self-assumedly draws in Sweden's King in the sect's propaganda. But not surprising.

The priest Karl-Erik Nylund, who for many years has studied divergent movements and wrote a book about them, Att leka med elden (To play with fire), lists the Scientology church as the most dangerous sect in Sweden. In addition, one knows the manipulative sects through the four A's: Aggression, Aversion, Alienation and Absolute Truth, he says.

As if I didn't know that! The darkest days of my life came suddenly out of a clear blue sky in 1978, when my Karin was snared by the sect's enlisters at her workplace. Their interest in her was especially great because she was an unusually attractive woman, whom they felt they could use as a "poster girl." It began with her returns home after long evening sessions. When she could not fire me up by the doctrine, which I doubted after having read prophet Hubbard's weak literary nonsense, she became less and less aware of my presence. The blow came the day her master asked what my attitude was toward her new belief. When she answered that I was quite negative, her group classified me as "covertly hostile." There were just two alternative conclusions according to them: my conversion or a divorce. She dared to sleep in the same room as me, but treated me as if I had the plague, and addressed me with epithets which I didn't know were part of her vocabulary. She was suddenly like a child of both God and Satan.

Hell took place for a few months. I thought to myself not to give up this woman only because a few fanatics distorted her head. I knew that she was too intelligent to need mental crutches and too honest not to find sour dough under the syrup, after a time. For Karin it went that way for a while, then it was revealed and, as the poet Anders Österling would have said, "she returned to firm ground and real living." Karin has since passed away of cancer in 1996, only 56 years old.